Evaluating Health and Human Service Programs in Community Settings New Directions for Evaluation, Number 83

The key difference between community-based evaluation and other types of evaluation lies in understanding and accommodating the unique situations of communities, their leadership, their social and political climates, and their perception of needs. This volume of New Directions for Evaluation examines how to improve approaches to evaluation in community organizations, emphasizing the need to assess the fit between evaluators? skills and styles, and the cultural reality of communities. The author--experienced evaluators and community-based program leaders--describe choices about evaluation practice that are available to the evaluator, the program, and the community. They also present an effective evaluation prescreening tool, which has been successfully used to match evaluation plans with particular community program evaluation needs, resources, and commitments.This is the 83rd issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Evaluation.

JOSEPH TELFAIR is associate professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, and director, Division of Social, Health Services and Community-Based Research within the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center, School of Medicine, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. LAURA C. LEVITON was professor in the Department of Health Behavior, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham and is now senior program officer for research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. JEANNE S. MERCHANT is project coordinator in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham.